


Bless the Rains

by Mosca



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes and the 21st Century, Cake, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roommates, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28964253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: Bucky and Sam move in together, squabble over kitchen appliances, fall in love, watch old movies, and refuse to talk about Steve.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 159





	Bless the Rains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [footnoterphone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/footnoterphone/gifts).



> This fic is set after the events of Avengers: Endgame, and it exists because Footnoterphone dared me to write domestic fluff. The title is from "Africa" by Toto, of course.
> 
> This story contains mention and discussion of Steve Rogers' death, detailed depiction of depression and PTSD, Washington DC geography as interpreted by someone who has been there a bunch of times but never lived there, a scene that might make you sad about Chadwick Boseman, wanton objectification of Cary Grant, and far less sex than originally intended.
> 
> Thanks to Lovessong for beta reading and suggesting the ending!

It would be unfair to say that Bucky is a disaster in the kitchen. He’s more of a 99-year-old man, and he can’t be blamed for that. He cannot figure out how the ice maker in the fridge works. Either he puts his glass under the dispenser without pressing the lever and scowls when nothing happens, or he presses the lever with no glass underneath and sends cylinders of ice flying everywhere, so Sam has to sponge up puddles for the rest of the day. “Why can’t I just reach into the bin and take out the ice I need? Is that unsanitary now?” Bucky asks. It is somewhere between sarcasm and a real question. 

He calls the whole appliance an icebox and periodically explains that when he was a child they had to buy blocks of ice from the iceman to keep food cold. He and Steve would shave chips of ice off the block and suck on them on hot days, and his mother would scold them for wasting the ice, which of course was more expensive in summer. When he tells stories like these, Sam pretends to nap, not because he’s bored, but because he misses Steve despite everything.

*

Bucky refuses to use the microwave. He asks Sam how it works once, and when Sam admits he doesn’t exactly know, Bucky squints at it with suspicion and gives up on it. The oven works perfectly well for anything a microwave can do, and despite the bells and whistles of their chrome-plated appliances, a forced gas flame is reassuringly ageless technology. Bucky does melt a plastic take-out container inside the oven once, not realizing that the United States has not switched to the biodegradable, heat-resistant containers that are standard in Wakanda. Bucky’s mistake sets off the smoke alarm and takes some effort and humiliation to clean up, in addition to ruining what should have been a tasty lunch of leftover chicken chow mein and egg rolls from the one hole-in-the-wall place in Washington, DC, that makes Chinese food that tastes like Brooklyn in 1939.

Bucky would have thought Sam would roll his eyes at greasy, old-fashioned Chinese takeout, but Sam says it is one of the great American cuisines. They read their fortune cookies to each other and laugh at destiny.

*

Sam assumed that technological advances like digital cable TV and streaming services would be beyond Bucky’s comprehension, but it turns out he spent a year of recovery watching Wakandan soap operas and has fully embraced the binge watch. “It’s how I learned Xhosa,” Bucky explains. “I put the English subtitles on and got addicted to _The Many Loves of General Thandiwe.”_

Sam says maybe they can watch it together sometime, but there are no Wakandan shows on Netflix yet. Besides, he has so much saved on the DVR that he could do nothing but watch TV for a solid week and would still have 60% of the hard drive full. What he doesn’t need to tell Bucky is that this used to be a survival tactic, during the weeks when his mental health was so shaky that some days all he _could_ do was watch TV. 

Bucky broaches the topic gently. “How many different shows are there about how to bake a cake?” he asks as he scrolls through Sam’s list of saved programs. 

“A lot, I guess. They’re relaxing. All that running around a kitchen, but when you’re done, you have something beautiful. And nourishing, too.”

“Have you ever tried to bake one?” Bucky’s teasing a little now.

“Nah,” Sam says. “Actually baking one wouldn’t be as relaxing as letting someone else do it.”

There is a moment of silent agreement.

“Want some cake?” Sam asks.

“Are you buying?” Bucky says.

“Nope. I don’t want cake. You’re the one who sounds like he does.”

Bucky gets out his phone, which he uses with a combination of Wakandan facility and old-man fussiness. “Hey Google, what’s the phone number for a local bakery?” So the app has to ask if he wants him to dial it. He does, and it does, and before Sam can stop him, Bucky is ordering a chocolate birthday cake with vanilla buttercream frosting for an imaginary five-year-old who loves airplanes, and can they put a rush on it?

The next morning, they eat buttercream fighter jets for breakfast and watch four episodes of _Cake Boss 3: Return of the Cake._

*

“How can you have not solved potholes yet?” Bucky asks. “In Wakanda, the roads are flawless.”

Sam sighs with drama that is only half-feigned and tells Bucky about the time that Domino’s started paving the potholes. He also points out that it doesn’t snow in Wakanda, and that Wakanda is a benevolent monarchy that can unilaterally allocate funds for infrastructure, unlike the District of Columbia, whose Department of Transportation is administered by a federal government that could not actually give fewer fucks.

“Is that what the ‘Taxation Without Representation’ license plates are about?” Bucky asks, knowing that the answer is in the question. Life in the 21st century is full of epiphanies that everyone around him had when they were eight years old.

Bucky misses riding his motorcycle on a highway that stretched out like an endless gray ribbon between green hills. He misses weeks where he had more conversations with goats than with humans, and none of them were about the dishwasher. He misses free, reliable internet service and free, non-judgmental health care. In Wakanda, he falsely deduced that the whole world was a techno-pastoral utopia, and the good old U.S. of A. is a constant disappointment in comparison. 

*

Bucky has a list of foods that are different now. Most fruit is better, and that goes way beyond bananas, whose sweetness was exciting for a month before Bucky got more adventurous. There are seventeen varieties of apples at Whole Foods, all of them distinct, crisp and flavorful. If you have the cash, you can eat peaches in winter that don’t come from a can, although Bucky still likes the canned ones - and those have improved, too. The mangoes he buys in Dupont Circle don’t hold a candle to the mangoes in Wakanda, but they are still mangoes. Some of the other fruit he remembers from Wakanda is harder to find: he bought out the African specialty supermarket’s entire supply of mobola plums the one time it had them, and he devoured them even though they were mushy.

Sushi is confusing and seems vaguely unsafe. Chipotle is a mind-boggling miracle of efficiency. Most candy and cookies are way too sweet and so smooth that he thought at first that he’d forgotten to unwrap them. The variety and abundance of the yogurt aisle at the Dupont Circle Whole Foods make him weep.

Meat is cheaper than when he was a kid, but the chicken has the texture and flavor of sawdust. Sam says it’s because Bucky only buys the cheap chicken, and he proudly brings home a whole organic bird. Sam distracts Bucky while he sifts secret spices into the flour coating, sets off the smoke alarm twice trying to get the fryer to the right temperature, and proves his point.

*

On U Street, there is a cash-only basement Ethiopian restaurant. Sam has only eaten there a couple of times, but Bucky spends his days there, hanging out with off-duty cab drivers, drinking coffee and eating whatever the owner feels like cooking for them. The restaurant keeps Sam’s mobile phone number tacked behind the bar in case Bucky drinks too many Kenyan beers and needs to be picked up. Bucky doesn’t have to say it’s the place in DC that feels most like Wakanda. It might also be the place in DC that feels the most like 1942. 

“It must be nice to spend time with folks who speak your language,” Sam says when Bucky comes home smelling of espresso and garlic. 

“I don’t know Amharic or Somali,” Bucky says. “I guess those weren’t useful enough to implant in my head.” 

“I didn’t mean literally,” Sam says.

“Oh.” Bucky hangs his head for a moment, or maybe he’s just lost in thought. “You mean people who’ve been to Hell, and Paradise, and ended up here?”

“Something like that.”

*

Bucky is so used to Sam’s sigh and facepalm when asked about the workings of the modern world, he doesn’t bother inquiring directly anymore. Instead, he goes to Google and Wikipedia, which he admits with no hesitation are a big improvement on hauling it to the local library and thumbing through the encyclopedia. Then, he mumbles a few choice phrases aloud until Sam weighs in. “And they base it all on one discredited doctor,” Bucky mutters.

“Anti-vaxxers are one of several things on this planet that makes me wonder if Thanos didn’t have a point after all,” Sam says. “You know they eradicated the measles? Declared it extinct. Twenty years ago.”

“I had the measles,” Bucky says. “Steve gave it to me for my ninth birthday.”

“That bastard,” Sam says. “I’m adding it to the list.”

“Leave it alone, the measles almost killed him,” Bucky says. “He got pneumonia and an eye infection. The doctor thought he might go blind.”

“‘Scuse me, I’ll just be over here getting my shots updated,” Sam says.

*

“Really? You’ve never seen _The Philadelphia Story_?” Bucky is fiddling with the TV remote, and Sam is letting him. They could already be watching the movie by now, if Sam were in control of the remote, but Bucky has claimed a sliver of pop culture superiority that Sam wouldn’t dream of taking away from him. 

Sam shrugs. “It’s an old movie.”

“I remember when it was a new movie,” Bucky says. “Steve and I must have seen it six times. We saw _His Girl Friday_ even more times. We had a buddy who worked in the theater, and he’d sneak us in the back when we couldn’t afford a ticket. That was the summer before I shipped out. All Steve wanted was to serve his country, and all I wanted to do was stare at Cary Grant.”

It’s an admission that Bucky has never made before, although he’s hinted at it. Sam’s mind kicks into therapist mode, and he gives the statement room to breathe. He gives himself room to breathe. Just because Bucky has a crush on an old movie star doesn’t mean he feels the same way about Sam.

Bucky finally manages to fire up the movie. The jokes are mannered, but they’re sharp enough to hold up. It’s hard to imagine that Bucky was alive and sneaking into movie theaters when people talked and dressed like this.

They order a pizza for lunch, and while they wait, Bucky pulls out his phone. “I bet Cary Grant made a whole lot of pictures I’ve never seen,” he says. “I never thought to look.” He scrolls through Wikipedia. “Oh, there’s a bunch. Some classics, I guess. And a few we can skip.” He points to a still from a screwball cross-dressing comedy from the late forties. “Looks like that one didn’t age so well.”

“We can watch another one, if you want,” Sam says.

Bucky chooses a Hitchcock thriller called _Notorious,_ which Sam has never heard of, and they start it when the pizza arrives. Halfway through, there’s a long kissing scene, traveling from room to room and twining with a telephone cord. It’s a thousand times sexier than two people getting naked and humping. Sam hasn’t thought about sex much since the Snap, but now all he can think about is kissing.

*

There are disagreements over the dishwasher. Bucky did what nobody does and read the fucking manual, and so the troubles began. “It says here that the built-in grease sensors save you the trouble of pre-rinsing.” If Bucky had been wearing reading glasses, he would have slid them down his nose emphatically. He doesn’t need them to sound like a cranky old coot. “Isn’t the whole point of this machine to make it so you don’t have to wash all the dishes by hand?”

“I’m not washing, I’m just -” Sam sighs. “This is a ploy to get me to do all the dishes myself.”

“What’s the difference? Whenever I do them, you pull them out, _wash them_ , and mutter about how I need to stop putting large items on the top rack.”

Sam slams down on the tap handle, turning off the water. “All right, we’ll do it your way. Once. So you can see why I do it my way.”

Sam tries not to cringe for the following two days while Bucky crams food-covered dishes willy-nilly into the dishwasher. There are mugs on the bottom rack and plates facing in every possible direction. Finally, Bucky declares the machine full, snaps a detergent pack into the slot, and sets the machine to Heavy Duty Wash. 

When the dry cycle finishes, Sam races to the dishwasher, ready to give Bucky his comeuppance. He pulls out one clean dish after another, impressed and humiliated at the same time. Just when he thinks he’s going to have to eat crow (and, honestly, save a lot of time on chores) he discovers a cereal bowl wedged on the top rack with a crust of oatmeal remnants clinging to it. “See? This is why we pre-rinse.”

*

They kiss for the first time in the kitchen. Sam is putting a breakfast power bowl in the microwave so he can get some protein in his stomach before work. Bucky walks in, pajama bottoms riding down to expose his hip bones, yawning and running his hands - one pink, one silver - through his unkempt hair. Of the many times in the past few weeks when Sam has thought about kissing him, this is the one that clicks. Sam says “Good morning,” and pecks Bucky on the cheek like this is how they always start their day. 

Bucky freezes, and for a moment, Sam thinks he’s going to get slapped like one of the fools in the old screwball comedies that Bucky keeps getting him to watch. Instead, he cups Sam’s face in his hands - one silver, one pink - and kisses him like he’s Ingrid Bergman on the phone with Cary Grant.

*

People don’t walk anymore. Steel is cheap and gas is cheap, so people drive. Bucky refers to his favorite Ethiopian restaurant on U Street as “walking distance” and gets Sam’s familiar side-eye, accompanied by, “That’s three miles away and right off the Metro, and - is this another one of those old man things that you’re going to explain with a story about a moonlit night in St. Olaf?”

Bucky doesn’t ask what St. Olaf is, because he’d be subjecting himself to one of three things: a rhythm and blues album that Sam will sing along with while shushing him anytime he asks a question; eight hours of a TV show that was more fun in 1995 than it is now; or a lecture on some long-forgotten news story that Wikipedia summarizes very differently than Sam remembers it.

“I have no problem with the Metro,” Bucky says. “I grew up riding the New York subway. It’s just that most of the time, I get to the station and decide I’d rather walk.”

Sam picks Bucky’s cellphone up from the table and traces the unlock pattern, which he has memorized by looking over Bucky’s shoulder. Sam has installed more apps on Bucky’s phone than Bucky has. “Let me tell you about a little thing that we in the 21st century call a rideshare app,” Sam says.

Sam explains what a Lyft is, then re-explains it when Bucky says he doesn’t see how that’s different from a taxi, then pointedly subjects Bucky to four episodes of something called _Golden Girls_ when Bucky says he would rather take the DC Metro than ride in a stranger’s car, especially since he’s friends with taxi drivers who have a hard enough time making a living. 

_Golden Girls_ is funny, though, he admits. “Betty White’s still alive,” Sam says. “Survived the Snap and everything. I guess she’s a couple years younger than you.”

*

The waitress at the Ethiopian restaurant on U Street asks Sam if he and Bucky are a couple. Their relationship is common knowledge in the superhero community, but he’s never talked about it, and certainly never brought it up in the support groups he leads. He’s not sure what’s holding him back, but it feels better than he could have anticipated to tell a near-stranger, “Yeah.”

“So you are married?” she asks, the way straight people are over-eager when they realize they have a gay friend. The way white people get excited when they realize you’re close enough to consider you their Black friend. The way nobody is proud to refer to you as their friend who’s living with PTSD and depression.

“Nah, we’re not even engaged yet,” Sam says. “He’s old-fashioned.”

*

Bucky opens his third Miller Light with a flick of his thumbnail. The 21st century is full of fancy beer, but the cheap stuff tastes better. “Corporal Romanelli," he says, continuing a story he began on his way to the fridge. "Literal choirboy. He would have gone to seminary if he hadn’t enlisted.”

Sam is half a beer ahead of Bucky. “So you showed him a new way to Jesus?”

“Nah. By the time I met him, he already had a reputation as the Blow Job Queen of the 14th Infantry.” Bucky smiles. “Well deserved.” He swishes his beer can mournfully. “I looked him up online. He moved to San Francisco after the war, owned a bathhouse, lived into his eighties.”

Sam shakes his head. “Queen of the entire 14th? I had a good week with the Queen of the 2nd Battalion in Mosul, and he was damn proud of the title.”

“I guess there was less competition in 1942,” Bucky says. “But you got a whole week?”

“Hey, I got some game,” Sam says. He finishes his beer, crushes the can, and cracks open another.

“Any idea what happened to him?”

“He performs as Velveteen Martini,” Sam says. “I saw him at the Green Lantern a few times. He does a great Donna Summer.”

*

“Sam?”

“Mm.” Today is not a good day. It’s been a solid week since Sam has had a good day. 

“How long have you been wearing those pants, Sam?”

“Dunno.” He’d smell them, but that would require taking them off.

“If you take a shower, I promise I won’t make fun of your singing,” Bucky says.

Sam hoists himself off the couch. “I’ll take a shower, but then I’m going right back where I came from.”

“I was about to take a walk,” Bucky says. “You can come with me after your shower. If you’re up to it.”

Sam showers. He doesn’t sing. He puts on clean sweatpants and a clean t-shirt. He brushes his teeth and shaves. He’s not really interested in the walk. The couch looks better.

The part of his brain with a master’s degree in counseling kicks in. Fresh air and movement will help him, whether he thinks he wants them or not. He grabs a Xanax from his emergency stash. It will get him calm enough to figure out what to do next. 

Bucky gets him out the door. They walk slowly through their neighborhood, hogging the sidewalk, Bucky’s metal fingers warm between Sam’s own. After a few blocks, Bucky asks, “What are you seeing in your head?”

Sam shrugs. “The usual. Just louder than it’s been in a while.”

Bucky swings Sam off the sidewalk onto some stranger’s lawn. He puts the fingertips of both hands on Sam’s temples and makes silly buzzing and tweeting sounds until Sam feels a smile bust through the cracks. Bucky draws his hands back as if holding a living, crackling ball between them, and mimes chucking it over the rooftops. “There,” Bucky says. “All gone.”

*

They go on vacation to Wakanda because Shuri needs to upgrade the firmware in Bucky’s arm, and because Sam has never really seen the place. The tram from the airport to their hotel is spotless and well-lit, and smells faintly of gardenias. A voice-controlled cart carries their luggage from the lobby to their room. They don’t have to check in, because guests can use their phones to unlock the door. It’s more homey than futuristic, though, all rattan furniture and lazy ceiling fans. “No wonder nobody ever leaves Wakanda,” Sam says as he takes off his stale airplane clothes. “The rest of the world all looks like a shithole in comparison.” 

Bucky shrugs. “Try getting a decent taco here,” he says. “And all the baseball games are on at three in the morning.”

“I thought you loved it here,” Sam says.

“I do,” Bucky says. “But now that I’m back, I remember why I don’t really want to live here.”

The next day, while Bucky gets his arm fixed, Sam streams an audio tour from the Birnin Zana Visitors’ Bureau website and sees the sights. He expects his Americanness to stick out, but he doesn’t look different enough from the locals. They greet him in Xhosa or Kikongo, and he has to sheepishly ask them if they speak English. They all do, at least a little, enough to laugh when he says, “Sorry, I’m a tourist.”

Sam’s ancestors wouldn’t have been from anywhere near here. They would have been captured and transported from Africa’s west coast: Ghana, Liberia, Guinea. He learned about slave routes during a two-day research sidetrack while he was working on his master’s thesis on Generational Differences in Counseling African-American Veterans. He confirms on his phone that Accra is farther from Birnin Zana than Washington, DC, is from Los Angeles. He’s not in his homeland; he’s still on the other side of the world.

*

On their last day on Wakanda, Bucky and Sam have breakfast with the royal family. It’s what passes for a relaxed affair, served family-style on a low table with cushions for seats, on a covered patio that overlooks cliffs and mountains. It might be the most beautiful place in Wakanda, and that might be why Shuri has chosen to host them here. 

“This country’s going to kill me with carbs,” Sam whispers to Bucky as he grabs another chapati and a handful of little doughnuts filled with coconut paste. He spoons red pepper sauce onto the chapati and spreads it with the spoon like pizza sauce. Bucky almost tells him that’s not how you’re supposed to eat it, but Sam takes it hard when he’s criticized about things that don’t matter. 

“You like Umgodi Ovuthayo sauce?” T’Challa asks, in the affable way that makes it easy to forget he’s the king of an entire country.

“So much I bought eight jars of it and stashed it in my luggage,” Sam says. He is not kidding. This is the first Bucky has heard about it.

“It will be available in the United States soon,” T’Challa says. “The manufacturer has signed a distribution deal with your Whole Foods supermarket.”

Sam mouths “Whole Foods” at Bucky, and they both start laughing.

*

Bucky enrolls in a computer skills course at the VA. “That one’s for senior citizens,” Sam explains.

“I’m 101 years old,” Bucky reminds him.

Bucky is the oldest person in the class and looks the youngest. There’s only one other World War II vet in the group; the rest served in Korea or Vietnam, conflicts that Bucky missed. It’s nice to spend four hours a week with a bunch of guys who distrust smartphones and type with their index fingers. Bucky expected to have learned a lot of the course material in Wakanda, but he comes home from class most nights asking Sam questions like, “Have you heard of a thing called a pivot table?” and “Did you know there’s a website for finding your long-lost relatives, and it’s not Facebook?”

Sam nods supportively most of the time. Bucky’s pretty sure Sam has no idea what a pivot table is.

*

Bucky’s arm is warm. It looks like it should freeze Sam’s fingertips like a flagpole in January, but it’s usually a little warmer than Bucky’s body temperature. It purrs at a frequency too low to hear, but when Bucky presses his thumb to Sam’s lips, Sam can feel the steady thrum. Once, Sam catches Bucky changing out his arm’s battery pack, a solar-powered device almost indistinguishable from a flash drive. “What’s up?” Bucky asks as he snaps the battery into place and slides the hatch shut. A smile plays across his face, more in his eyes than in his lips.

“Nothing, I - You all done with, um, that?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I’m sorry. I know it makes people uncomfortable.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Sam says. “It’s part of you, isn’t it? It’s more that I’m curious. What it feels like to open your arm up like that.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt, exactly.” Bucky gnaws his lip. “It feels a little like picking my nose.”

Sam pulls up the desk chair and straddles it backwards. “You know, I dream sometimes I can feel my wings, the way you feel your arm. Good dreams, flying with the wind at my back.”

“Shuri could make that happen for you,” Bucky says. “I think she’d enjoy the challenge.”

“I said I dream about it, didn’t say I want it in real life.”

“Well, I’m sure she’ll still be there if you change your mind,” Bucky says.

Bucky slips behind the chair like a ninja and flutters kisses at the back of Sam’s neck. He tugs Sam’s belt free. Between the two of them, they get Sam’s pants down around his knees without kicking the chair over. They’ve had practice. Bucky runs a metal finger between the cheeks of Sam’s ass, and he knows where this is going, although he’s open to surprises. Pressed against sensitive skin, Bucky’s fingers hum like an idling laptop, and inside him, they are both alive and mechanically precise.

*

“Guess what I found out today?” Sam is smiling, which is not always a good sign. Sometimes it means his mind is swirling, and he’s trying to drown that out.

“New season of Cake Boss?” Bucky says.

“You’re eligible for your G.I. Bill scholarship,” Sam says, apparently letting Bucky’s joke sail past him. “If you want to take another computer class or something.”

Bucky enrolls at the community college. He tries to do it online, but there are too many options, so he goes in person to the college’s Veteran’s Services office. “Any way I can major in 21st Century Studies?” he asks the counselor who’s helping him, but that joke sails past, too.

He signs up for Introduction to Computer Science, Fundamentals of Psychology, Composition I, and Beginning Automotive Repair. Sam is giddier at Bucky’s enrollment welcome packet than Bucky himself is. “Automotive repair?”

“It’s steady work once you get good at it,” Bucky says. “Salim from the restaurant knows a guy who’s looking for taxi mechanics.”

“You get a stipend from S.H.I.E.L.D. You don’t need to be making 25 an hour fixing taxis,” Sam says.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. only calls us up two or three times a year, and you never know when that’s going to dry up,” Bucky says. “Also, I know a guy who keeps a spare set of mechanical wings in a storage unit that might need off-the-books maintenance once in a while.”

“Look at you, scholar,” Sam says, and kisses his cheek.

*

Sam is trying to set up DoorDash on Bucky’s phone so Bucky can order dinner on the nights when Sam has to lead evening group therapy. “Here, just put your credit card number in, and -”

“Oh, I don’t have any of those,” Bucky says.

“Well, use your debit, then.”

“I don’t have one of those either,” Bucky says. “S.H.I.E.L.D. HR keeps nagging me to get a bank account, but I don’t trust them. I saw too many people lose everything overnight when I was a kid. I know it’s different now, but -”

“It ain’t that different,” Sam finishes. “Still. What do you do? Pay cash for everything?”

Bucky shrugs. “It’s worked out so far. I’ve been paying my cell phone bill down at the check cashing place. That’s how I’m cashing my stipend checks, too.”

“You know the check cashing place charges an arm and a leg for that, right? And you’re losing more money that way than if you got a bank account? Listen. Bucky. Just get a checking account, keep a few hundred bucks in there for emergencies, and keep all the rest in a bag under your mattress if that helps you sleep at night. Okay? Please? For me? For _pizza_?”

Bucky acquiesces. A week later, when his debit card comes in the mail, he signs the back while Sam watches. Out of curiosity, Sam looks under the mattress, but Bucky is too clever to keep his cash there, of course. Sam never does figure out where the stash is.

*

Bucky comes home from Whole Foods with a dozen elaborately frosted chocolate cupcakes, each white mound of buttercream topped with red and blue star-shaped sprinkles and a tiny sugar cookie iced with stars and stripes. “We throwing a birthday party for America?” Sam asks snidely as he puts away the other groceries: hot dogs and buns, a tub of cole slaw, way too many mangoes, a big jar of Wakandan chili sauce. 

“America isn’t the only one with a birthday tomorrow,” Bucky says, setting loose a heavy silence that threatens to sink the room. 

“I was going to say it was morbid, but you know what? If Steve was around, he’d want us to throw him a party.”

“After telling us several times he didn’t want us to go to the trouble,” Bucky adds.

“And then acting all embarrassed but playing it up like he’s the king of the living room all day,” Sam finishes.

“I talk to him sometimes,” Bucky says. “Not expecting him to answer, just having stuff I want to tell him. I talk to him about you, about us. And today while I was walking home from the store, I felt like I heard him saying, ‘Well, you know who it was who fixed you up, don’t you?’”

Sam is silent for a moment, sensing the ghostly presence of his smug friend. “The man has a point.”

“You know what else Steve would want?” Bucky says. “He’d want us to each have one of those cupcakes early, so they don’t go stale.”

Sam rolls his eyes affectionately. “Waste not, want not.”

They each choose a cupcake and toast to Steve. Bucky gets a dollop of frosting on his nose when he bites into his cupcake, and Steve whisks off the frosting with his fingertip to steal it into his mouth. Bucky puts both cupcakes down on the counter and sweeps Sam into a kiss. 

It’s another victory for Steve Rogers. Happy birthday, America.


End file.
